


El Sabor del Sol, Sangre, y Salsa

by Austennerdita2533



Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: A little Spanish, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Beachy Setting, Future Fic, Humor, Just pretend that never happened, No Babies or Baby Plot, Post-Canon, Some Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 16:47:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7722259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Austennerdita2533/pseuds/Austennerdita2533
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Still ruing with some residual bitterness over her romantic past, Caroline swears off men. And Mystic Falls. She ditches her small-town life and friends to embark on a journey of exploration to reclaim her freedom and zest for supernatural life. This leads her to the beachy paradise of Playa del Carmen where she aims to practice Spanish, tour the area, and relax. While enjoying herself, however, she soon finds her solitary vacation hijacked by some familiar Original faces. </p><p>(Title translated: The Taste of Sun, Blood, and Salsa)</p>
            </blockquote>





	El Sabor del Sol, Sangre, y Salsa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Biana_Delacroix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Biana_Delacroix/gifts).



Caroline had fled to beautiful Playa del Carmen, Mexico to immerse herself in sun, rum, anonymous human blood, and tequila on the rocks. Not men. Stefan Spineless Salvatore had polluted her heart further with cynicism on that subject when he’d said goodbye. In a letter.

Seven years, countless foiled supernatural plots, steady friendship, and one unsatisfying romance later and he couldn’t bear the break-up awkwardness long enough to wish her well on her worldwide excursion in person. His farewell words were well-articulated and sincere, of course, but in a letter nevertheless.

_The freaking coward._

A few months ago, thanks to her copious research and Bonnie’s magic, they’d commandeered a witchy Kai-loophole and had managed to restore Elena back to the land of the not-perpetually-sleeping, sending both Salvatores drooling after her like conditioned dogs. They’d panted before her for belly-rubbed treats and had fetched long-buried bones whenever she’d whistled for their help. Moreover, they’d both decided to drink the cure and finish their days as humans and not as vampires.

This, ironically, wasn’t particularly all that upsetting to those of them who still remained behind in Mystic Falls. Or surprising, either.

Thankfully, Caroline’s (deluded) romantic idealism of Stefan already had begun to wane by that point. The halo-like glow she’d sworn once swirled around his _perfect boyfriend_ head had begun to dim…then expire completely. He’d already brushed her aside to save Damon numerous times during their three years together and had forgotten to include her in important decisions, clueing her into the reality of the secondary status she held in his life. She was his guilty afterthought, not his priority.

Deep-down, Caroline knew she deserved better…but had hesitated to extricate herself from the relationship at first. She’d clung and hung and swung from the shriveled piece of _I’m yours_ twine he’d once offered. Making excuses for its hollow, just-words construction until it disintegrated in her hands and revealed the truth: he never was.

_He is Damon’s. He is Elena’s. Never was he mine—never, never._

Stefan became a crutch. He was nothing but a debilitating weakness that had subdued the confident, independent artery in her heart, transfiguring it back into the ugly duckling with the rough and neurotic thumps that no one appreciated, but everyone mocked. He helped pump it full of the old _pick me, pick me_ neediness and insecurity she’d felt as a human. He was a box and she’d folded herself into him like a docile gift wearing a bow: understanding and compliant and sweet. She'd become a quiet, wordless, suffering white-picket-fence gal whose life bled colorless. And incomplete.

Unfortunately, Caroline had allowed Stefan to simplify her in the years they’d dated. To tame her. She'd let him restrain those itching-to-explore dragon feet that yearned to kick and stroke through the clouds of eternity. And how she hated herself for it now!

_Hated, hated, hated._

She blamed herself for allowing small town familiarity to rankle her in dependence. For letting herself swim into Stefan’s fishing net so he could cradle her in the outdated dreams she’d once imagined for herself, but had long since outgrown. She held herself responsible for bartering for his love and attention like a commodity when he should’ve given it for free.

_Never again, never again, never again._

As far as men in general were concerned, Caroline would rather drain them all to extinction than contend with with another second of their Casanova-spewing, not-the-one heartbreaking, independence-stifling, abandoning ways. No man—alive or undead—would dare to wobble her knees or sweep her off her feet again. She wouldn’t let it happen. She wouldn’t.

_Never again, never again, never again._

No, her damsel’d days of fairy tale prince worship were over for good. Finished. Caroline had stolen back the keys and had climbed down the tower vine with feet, which were wild and unshackled, like they were forever meant to be. She’d reclaimed the vigor of self-worth, then set her caged spirit free.

Mindfully, she thanked her faulty hero for weaponizing her.

Crushed fantasy had wielded her back into the cute, conniving queen of death who was unafraid to punish every last one of these pawing, undeserving bastards who attempted to lasso her off the sturdy throne of Caroline-vertebrae she’d reconstructed for herself. She stood tall and strong and proud again. Not on knees, but on her own two feet. And God help the puckering wretches who tried to upend her firm steel cleats!

Caroline would suck deserts into their veins and leave them to rot—desolate—in the brutal windless air as vultures circled above their heads waiting to feast on weary self-disappointment that collected along their bones like meat. She’d let the predators gnaw and gnaw on it. Watching. Relishing as they chewed through confidence and left nothing behind but blood, vacancy, and shivering insecurity.

She’d let all these men _hear_ the crack and tear of regret as self-dignity collapsed in lumbar along their spines. She'd make them _taste_ the pain of a retracting coupledom leash. She'd force them to  _feel_ it: what it meant to be dominated, why it sucked to be devoured from the inside-out. She’d let them _smell_ the sawdust of inconsequentiality as she chafed it like wood from the skin of their hearts and crippled all five senses until they _saw._ Until their eyes _burned_  with hate, with hurt, to seehow another had whittled them into something small and broken…into something weak, weak, weak.

No, she would not be swept of her feet again. She would not be sliced back down to her knees.

No, Caroline Forbes ruled over her own wild heart again. It would not be stolen.

No man anywhere would supersede.

* * *

“Pardon me, miss,” a curt voice spoke from her left, fingers trailing the neck of the half empty tequila bottle next to her, “but has no one bothered to inform you that a melancholy lady drinking alone is dangerous?”

The fifth attempt in the last hour. Caroline scowled into her empty glass, almost pitying the polite fool. Almost.

“That depends,” she simpered, tone hardening. “Has no one bothered to inform you that a once-perky girl tainted by death, disappointment, and tequila is lethal to all smarmy pick-up artists who attempt to hit on her?”

Smooth and sharp, her words sliced like blades. They rendered him silent.

“Go and harass somebody else, Shakespeare. I’m not interested,” she said. Without turning around, she flicked her fingers at him like she would at a roach, dismissing him. “Besides, that line is older than you are.”

“That’s quite presumptuous,” the man responded as he slid into an adjacent bar stool. “And also…arguable.”

Caroline scoffed.

Poised, he inclined his head and clasped his hands together, “I’d relayed it not as a line of hopeful advancement, but as a statement of fact.”

Was he deaf? Dense? Or just asking to die?

“I said,” she snarled, “go…away.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Caroline saw him signal to the bartender for another round, seemingly intent on remaining. “I’m content where I am, thank you.”

“Listen, Cary Grant,” she said with a growl as she whirled to accost him, “unless you want to wear that sophisticated wagging tongue of yours as a noose-necklace, then I suggest you shut up, buzz off, and leave me the hell alone. Or else!”

“Or else what, precisely?”

The absolute nerve of this guy! Who the hell did he think he was? So suave…so patient…so calm…so…so… _infuriating_.

“You have exactly three seconds before I—before I—”

“Yes?” he said calmly. 

Like a rubber band, control snapped.

Lurching forward, the veins under her eyes engorging, ferocity zooming across her gums and cranking teeth _down down down_ like spiked suspension bridges, Caroline opened her mouth to continue—attack. Her fangs bared and snapped as her inner monster shape-shifted outward and hissed to strike, animalistic wrath leaping from her belly in growls as she sprung to silence this debonair nuisance once and for all. But as she moved—

“I’d prefer for you not to finish that sentence, if you don’t mind,” the man said.

Scrutinizing her stoically, his head cocked, his vise-like hand gripped her firmly by the throat and Caroline couldn’t move. Could barely breathe.

“Y-y-you,” she choked out, her eyes wide.

“Yes, _me_.” Retaliation evaporated into shock as Elijah Mikaelson tacked her in midair, his amber eyes upbraiding her from beneath pinched eyebrows. “How lovely to see you again, Miss Forbes. A little more peckish than usual this evening, are we?” he remarked drily.

Her gaze narrowed at this and she silently cursed her inebriated senses for not recognizing his voice earlier. Plucking at his fingers like too-tight shoelaces, she said, “Not for—not for Originals. I’m no hun-hunter like M-Mikael.”

“I’m delighted to hear that.” His lips upturned slightly. Not with amusement, per se, but with a gentler kind of assessment. “That would have ruined my entire vacation.”

“Becoming a hurl—hurling vampire dart would ruin mine,” she countered with a weak smile.

His expression still stern, watchful, Elijah released her.

Caroline plopped back onto her stool with a light _thud_ and a cough, her legs tucking underneath the counter like he’d been chivalrous enough to push in her seat. She rubbed at her neck and side-eyed him, “I’m glad to find that some things never change. Paranoia still practically gallops in your family, huh?”

“Among some members more than others, I suppose.” Aloof, Elijah tugged at his sleeves. Adjusted his Rolex. “But I could accuse you of the same fault, could I not? Tell me,” he continued as he pinned her with a look of austerity as she downed a fresh shot of tequila, “what has you so virulent this evening? So…on-guard?”

“Call me assuming, Miss Forbes, but I’ve been around a long time and I’d venture to say you’re quite determined to silence some particularly pesky demons with—forgive my frankness here—fang-like flair.”

Shifting uncomfortably, her bloodlust petering, Caroline brooded at the counter. This was so not a conversation she wanted to have with anyone tonight (let alone an Original). She'd chosen this tropical locale purposely after touring the West Coast. Not to reflect, but to escape. What rotten luck that this impeccably dressed, empathetic Mikaelson had found her here. Assessed her here. Prepared to advise her here.

It was touching—and also totally, undeniably _rude_.

“Blimey, Elijah,” a new voice piped in, saving Caroline from the hassle of responding, “how tedious you always manage to be. Can’t you understand that she’s hear to suck from life, not talk about it?”

Surprise karate-chopped her a second time as Kol materialized at his brother’s shoulder with two umbrella drinks in-hand. Unlike the elder Mikaelson who never seemed to part from the formality of a dress shirt and slacks (though his sleeves were currently cuffed neatly above his elbows), Kol looked summery in his khaki shorts, brown Sperrys, and a white shirt which was unbuttoned to reveal his bare torso.

“Worse,” he continued, “I finally think something wild is about to happen to you after centuries of all that Mr. Wrinkle Free nonsense and then you go and ruin it at all." He shook his head and groaned, “Where is your sense of adventure?”

“According to you,” Elijah replied, “I am an insufferable bore and have none.”

He took a sip of red wine.

“Exactly!” Kol said. He raised a drink in cheered salute. “So why not let her—hello there darling,” he winked at Caroline, “—why not let her have a little, teensy bite? What could it possibly have hurt?”

“Kol.”

“What?" he said, smirking. “No one would have minded.”

Elijah rubbed at his temple with his index finger. He never had tolerated absurdity well, Caroline remembered.

“Not to mention, we all know one slurp from your stiff, stale neck would sober up the poor girl with yawns for the next three decades.”

Mouth crinkling with amusement, Kol took a large swig of his sex on the beach and leaned in all bedrooms eyes to add to Caroline in a whisper, “This one’s rubbish, honeybuns. Why, his blood probably tastes of nothing except Armani and used library books, bland and boring as can be. But mine...”

“Ick.” Rebekah swooped in like a hawk, swiping the extra drink out of her brother’s hand. “Stop now and spare yourself the humiliation, I beg of you. No one, and I repeat no one, wants a drink from you,” she said.

Caroline’s mouth filled with sand.

This was unbelievable! Was her beachy getaway about to be invaded by every damn Mikaelson from New Orleans? Hell, the only ones yet to make an appearance were Finn, Freya, and—

Stopping herself, she decided to leave that name unthought and that chapter unopened. He wasn’t here to acknowledge, anyway. (Thank God.) Yep, she’d keep that name in the locked safe of her mind where it (and he) belonged.

“I suppose that extends to you, too, eh, sister?” Kol said.

Rebekah popped a hand on her hip and rolled her eyes, “Of course. Who bloody well knows what lurks inside one of your drinks. Gross.”

Dark eyes glinting, his lips stretched into a wide smirk. “Yes. Who knows, indeed.”

Then, quick as a cat, Kol leveraged his arm like a baseball bat and swung at Rebekah’s beverage, knocking it from her hand. His perfect connection split it in half and sent a wave of alcohol, ice cubes, and glass splashing into her face and down the front of her turquoise sundress to douse her in liquid fury.

Her reaction was swift: complacent to crazed to murderous in two seconds flat.

“Why, you wretched little piece of swine!” Rebekah exclaimed. She patted off the dripping mess with rage trembling in her hands, “And you wonder why you constantly find yourself with a dagger in your breast!”

For the first time in too long, Caroline almost burst into laughter. That is, until the blonde launched in her direction all clawed fingernails and teeth.

Kol, the cheeky instigator, had flashed away and ducked behind a cluster of vacant stools, opting to use them (and Caroline) to dodge his sister’s coming assault.

“Run, run, as fast as you can, you’ll never catch me I’m the tasty-drink man!” he taunted from astray, chuckling.

Rebekah threw out a flying, grasping fist at this, which Caroline narrowly escaped by blocking it with her elbows and strong-arming her feisty frenemy backwards, swerving her head side-to-side to avoid more hair-yanking blows.

“Just you wait, Kol! Just you wait! Whenever I get my hands on you,” she fumed, still charging forward, “I swear I’ll—I’ll twist your bones inside-out and bend you into a bloody clothes hanger!”

“Ah-ah.” He wagged his finger in the air and zipped around the crowded bar. Just out of reach. “Those threats are merely idle until you catch me, darling,” he said with a wink.

Elijah pinched his nose and sighed, “Must you two cause a spectacle everywhere we go?”

“Hello!?” Caroline gaped. “A little help here, please?”

With his elbow perched on the counter, the elder Original rested his chin in his hand and made no move to interfere. “This is embarrassing.”

“Ouch!” Caroline said as Rebekah’s nails curled into the skin of her shoulders and drew blood. “If you want to kill him, go for it! But don’t scar my damn arms in the process, okay?”

“You’ll heal, you big baby.”

“So not the point!” 

“Stop whining.”

She deflected another one of Rebekah’s scraping strikes toward Kol by kneeing her in the ribs, “I didn’t do anything to you, remember?”

“You’re in—” Rebekah’s jaw clenched “—my bloody—” her eye-veins undulated, “way!”

“Hey!” Caroline shrieked as the girl's fingers ripped and yanked through curls near her right ear before jerking her head to the side. “It’s not my fault your maniac brother decided to use me as a vampire shield,” she said.

She swatted back at the Original’s face, smacking her across the forehead with an open palm and marching her backwards—straight into the back of an elder man with a long ponytail grooving to the live band nearby.

“Oh, Bekah…” Kol beckoned with a whistle, recapturing both of the girls’ attention. He gyrated obscenely from the middle of the dance floor. “Come and get me, come and get me, come and get me…”

Eyes coal black, mouth contorted with rage, Rebekah hissed, “Move.”

“No manners,” Caroline clucked, still holding her off. “I must say I'm disappointed in you.”

The Original’s nostrils snarled like a dragon’s as she rammed and shoved against her to get free. “Please move your lethargic beauty queen ass now, or I swear I’ll decapitate you like a Barbie doll,” she said all fire and outrage.

Meeting Rebekah’s demanding glare with an insolent look of her own, Caroline curtsied obnoxiously before pushing her toward her snickering brother and flashing to the uncovered patio at the back of the bar. Away. She needed to move as far away as possible.

Desperate to flee the mayhem and to recapture her buzzed serenity, she retreated to the exit that led to the beach, leaving that entire batch of bickering, vacationing Mikaelsons to choke on her sandy beach dust.

(Or so she thought.)

“Well, well, well,” a familiar accent drawled, “look who it is.”

Was it Caroline, or did the entire country just capsize at the sound of that voice? She froze on the staircase as he stepped forward, momentarily losing the ability to exhale.

“If it isn’t my favorite new monkey in the middle.” Klaus' low laugh filled the darkness. “Finally come to say hello, I hope?”

Overhead, light from a giant sailor’s moon cascaded down and across his lithe form to tint him in golden-red shadow, the summer starlight illuminating the dark blond crown of curls atop his head and cutting his demeanor in crisp streaks of grandeur. Power clung to him like humidity, rippling and ruffling the worldly air he breathed. Its ancient hum glimmered in aura about him as thick and as untouchable as a vanishing mirage, tricking the senses into believing that his lethality could be predicted. Perceived. But it could not be.

Hands slung casually behind his back, deep dimples dented the curves of his upturned lips as he smiled—so strong and severe and self-assured like always. A devil not afraid to remind others that he always found a way to succeed. Delighted intensity sprung from those blue storm cloud eyes the moment their gazes met, attraction dilating pupils—striking between them in hurricane lightning. Stripping away pretense like spliced trees to reveal the raw bareness of similarity. And feeling.

Yes—the allure between them still existed. The connection rained between them in bowling-ball-sized hail pellets. It fractured all of Caroline’s window defenses and carved asteroid craters into the beating organ of her chest without decreasing its rhythm. Harder and louder and faster her heart pounded against that protective fortress of bones, rattling it like a wild tiger in a circus cage. Steadily steeper her pulse climbed in mountain elevation—up and up and up—so high, so aggressive, so shallow of oxygen…making her feel…making her feel…

When she still hadn’t answered, the silence between them stretching into unrolling balls of yarn, Klaus scratched his head and peered at her curiously. He cleared his throat,

“Having fun in Mexico, love?” 

* * *

It took Caroline ten minutes, two bathtub-foot plunges, and one rag to scrub out all the excess sand stuck in-between her preen and polished toes that night.

She lamented leaving those cute pink-wedged sandals behind at the bar, particularly because she’d just purchased them at a stylish shop earlier that morning, but she knew they would’ve impeded the speed of her departure. Vampire now or not, her past beach-jogging experience had taught her that sodden, sinking ground slowed anyone’s natural running pace. And with that ambulance siren of _fear fear fear_ whirring and churning inside of her stomach as he spoke, she couldn’t afford any such hindrance.

All she knew was that a gunshot had fired across her heart at sight of Klaus Mikaelson again. It had transformed her uncomfortably heeled feet into track spikes that not only ran…but raced.

They raced away.

Yes, Caroline raced—dashed—darted—sprinted—and zoomed away from that confounded hybrid as rapidly as her supernatural legs would propel her in the opposite direction. No _hello_ or _goodbye_. No words but the _oh, no_ written in her wide, unblinking eyes. Leaving him with nothing except a hasty Cinderella exit, a mound of kicked-up sand, and the sting of the sea’s high tide.

_No men, no men, no men._

_No Klaus, no Klaus, no Klaus._

Somehow, upon meeting him again after all these years and despite all of the romantic turmoil she’d experienced in that time, those two ideas became distinct in her mind. Entirely separate.

Caroline wanted to avoid men because so many of them bricked her in weakness; she wanted to avoid Klaus because although he unraveled her vulnerabilities, he never once manipulated them. If anything, his reverent admiration only helped to reinforce their independent potential to blossom. His encouragement imbibed her with self-faith, not self-doubt.

Since the day of her eighteenth birthday when he’d first healed her with his blood and offered her a choice, Klaus had never made her feel anything but strong. Capable. Competent. In control. He had given her nothing but freedom to be as cheerfully deadly and as self-sufficient as she chose to be. Instead of fastening a lock, he’d handed her the keys.

—And that’s precisely what had freaked Caroline the hell out!

It’s why she’d tornadoed away from him like some kind of spooked vamp-tasmanian devil. What girl wanted to process a bombshell of that magnitude with the man responsible for it standing (smirking) right in front of her? Talk about an inconvenient time for an epiphany!

As it turned out, the mad-dash back to her luxurious ocean-front suite was futile; Klaus never followed her. There was no chasing. There were no _how dare you turn your back on me_ ’s.There were no charming, unexpected gestures intended to try and knock her off-balance. He let her be.

Half relieved yet half disappointed at Klaus’ lack of pursuit, she showered before crawling into bed with a sigh. And despite the conflicting thoughts swirling around in her head, the lingering tequila in her body soon surrendered her tired eyes to her pillow. And to sleep.

* * *

Caroline spent the next week emerged in non-booze-related tourist activities to keep herself busy. She nibbled on spicy cuisine with _churros_ for dessert, explored the ancient Mayan ruins of Muyil, read chick lit novels, and dipped her toes in the surf. She practiced _español_ by befriending natives, hummed along to live music, snorkeled at the renown Sistemas Dos Ojos, ambled along _avenidas_ at sunset, and compelled waiters to fetch her tumblers of blood as she lounged on the _playa_ , the serene seafoam lullaby almost banishing all thoughts of Klaus.

Almost.

 _Where could he be, where could he be? Did he leave? Oh, what must he think of me!?_ she wondered.

With every day that passed and they didn’t again meet, guilt and shame and regret wracked harder against Caroline’s chest. What a horribly fickle friend she’d proven herself to be. A chicken. A coward. No different than Stefan. So not the master of hearts she’d molded herself into—a queen.

Petrified that Klaus would peer straight through her with that wise, savage, aged soul of his and bridge together more of their similarities, she’d fled at the first opportunity. Once again, she’d allowed herself to be weak.

Yes, she was to blame. She’d polluted her own heart with fear and dishonesty.

_What a coward...what a freaking coward._

Sitting alone on a curb outside _La Salsa Sangrienta_ nightclub just before midnight, Caroline, mulling and miserable, rifled through her purse until her fingers scraped against the item she wanted. She removed it with an exasperated hair flip: inhaling courage once, sighing away fear twice. She typed three things—a name and two words—and hit send in the same way gamblers roll the dice. With held-breath anxiety.

“Just curious,” Klaus responded cheekily as he stooped beside her not a moment later, “should I skedaddle back to my phone or are you sorry enough to make amends in person?”

A blush colored her face. Talk about _lo siento_ being the magic words!

“Sí.”

“In something other than drab monosyllables?”

“Sí, amigo mío.”

Klaus shook his head at her little ‘friend’ endearment, eyes gleaming with amusement and pleasantry, “In English please,  _mi amor_?”

Had he been nearby this whole time, Caroline wondered? Watching her vacillate from dreary to disgusted to determined? Partaking in all of her vacation whims by observing them quietly from the shadows?

She already knew the answer. _The creep_.

“Si lo preferirías…” Caroline said with a sigh and stood.

“Still headstrong,” he said matter-of-factly. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Oh, don’t pretend like it bothers you.”

“Touché,” he dimpled.

“Besides, you can’t fault me for wanting to speak the language while I’m here. It’s the best way to learn,” she said, nodding with conviction.

“You're always the belle of the books, aren't you?” Klaus offered her his arm. “I’ve missed that about you, love.”

"Missed what exactly?”

“Your voracity," he said. "I’ve missed your voracity for life and excitement, for new experiences, for unexpected pleasures or surprises or mysteries. For—for everything frankly.”

Her hand pressed tight against his bicep as he flashed them inside, the club’s atmosphere immediately billowing them in spice, sweat, and salsa. Drums mirrored the passionate _thump-thump_ of her parched and starving soul as they paraded across the floor, arm-in-arm.

“Among other things,” he added suggestively.

Hips swayed and sashayed. Hair whipped and flipped every which way. Skirts pinwheeled above ankles, twirling in beautiful disarray as men and women dipped and turned their partners only to spin them back against chests where they were meant to bounce. Ricochet. Because dancing limbs, like captivated hearts, were meant to move in new rhythms…not stay.

“Why do I feel like you being here is no coincidence?” Caroline asked with an arched eyebrow.

“Because that’s the law of the land, sweetheart, or haven’t you heard? Nothing is coincidence.” A sly grin enveloped his mouth as he maneuvered them closer to the music, “Besides, even kings need a vacation,” he said.

“Wow, who are you and what have you done with Klaus Mikaeson? Let’s leave the fate-talk to the believers, shall we?” she laughed.

“Which you are not?”

“Not lately.”

Stopping abruptly, almost bumping into a lively group of thirty-somethings, he pierced her with a look and said, “That’s rather cynical coming from you.”

“Oh, please,” Caroline said with a scoff. She threw a hand on her hip. “You and I both know fate is nothing but a fairy tale.”

“Do we, now?” 

She narrowed her eyes.

“Yes!”

Damn him and that challenging look—how it screamed _lies_. Damn him for reading the story of pain in her eyes. Damn him and that calm reassuring tracing of her knuckles, causing goosebumps to rise on her skin, making that familiar flame pool in her belly to burn her full of desire. Damn him and all of that musing and silent scrutinizing.

Damn him, damn him, damn him!

“Believing in fate only tosses you on your ass, and I refuse to be tossed any longer," she said. "I’m over the bruises and the sore butts, okay? Over it.”

_Caroline would not lose the strength of two legs._

_C_ _aroline would not be knocked down to her knees._

_Caroline would not be swept up like some helpless damsel to be carried astray._

_Caroline would not be dumped somewhere far, far away_.

 _Never again, never again, never again_.

Klaus lifted her chin with his finger, forcing her to see him. To hear him.

“Life is what knocks you on your ass, Caroline. And you either choose to stay down and dead, or you leave. You're the one who decides whether or not you wish to keep moving and clawing. Fate, on the other hand," he continued, his voice low and measured, "fate is what you walk to meet. It’s what waits for you at the end of the street you cannot yet see.”

“And what, O’ Wise Hybrid, am I supposed to meet?”

“Tonight?” Dark delight splayed across his features as he lifted her hand to his lips and bowed his head to kiss it, “Tonight you're meant to meet me _,_ ” he grinned suggestively.

Without another word, Klaus tugged her by the hand and stormed into the flagrant swell of people, weaving them both around spinning, groping bodies as the percussive tapping of the song vibrated loud enough to almost shuffle-slide feet. Vampire-human senses heightened and splashed a current of adrenaline rafting through hands and arms, legs and feet. Minds wiped clean. They surrendered to tastebuds and licked the air to swallow voluptuous notes of melody like tangible pealings of heaven. The band dipped into the chorus the moment he pulled Caroline into the salsa madness and debauchery and heat.

 

> _Quiero quedarme en cada instante  
>  de tu vida, tu vida  
>  de tu amor_

“I take it this is your half-assed way of asking me to dance?” she grumbled, staggering along behind him.

“Salsa is not about asking, love—” He whipped them to the center of the stampcrete floor and arrested Caroline with one look. One word. “But _feeling_. “

Hybrid eyes gleamed from blue to black to yellow as he stared back at her. Hungry. Honest. Haunted.

Lust and ardor rolled off his body. Centuries of history tumbled down his sleeves as he directed her left hand to his shoulder and took her right hand with a firm, gentlemanly squeeze. Then, positioning his free hand on the small of Caroline’s back, his fingers teased and scrunched up the fabric of her shirt to touch her with a calloused palm that felt warm. Rough. And tender as it caressed bare her flesh, her soft skin.

For this song, for this one dance, Klaus had branded her as _his_.

“What you need to feel right now is the power and passion of unity,” he said. “What you need to know is that it exists; it is not lacking. You need to understand how it can be contained in equal movement among worthy partners—half you and half me.”

He drew her into him as he spoke. Closer…and closer…until they were so close they almost shared the same breath, tread on the same toes, wore the same hips, rested inside the same contented sigh—the latin rhythm almost bursting from their veins like comet-tails that blotted the night sky. It transcended them into musical clefs of varying pitch, moving them lower then higher and higher—

And that’s when they moved. Together, in one-two step, they glided.

 

> _Quiero quedarme en tus manos_  
>  _para ser caricias para construir_  
>  _para sentirme tuyo para sentirme en mi_

A shiver traveled down the length of Caroline’s spine as Klaus ushered them into alternating hip-swaying steps, those paintbrush fingers of his carving sensuous lines along the planes of her body to cover her in bombastic gold. Sculpting skyscrapers with hummingbird wings into her bones so she remembered to build up and up, to let potential rise. Fly. Sketching against her skin with the charcoal sensations of an un-lived life. Tantalizing her with the silky, seductive promise of more.

> _Toma mis manos construye el eden  
>  y con una caricia dibújame en tu piel_

“Don’t lie to me, Mikaelson. I know men always prefer to lead,” she answered brazenly, “in life and in dance.”

“I disagree. It’s not leading if a man finds someone who moves with him seamlessly in _one, two, three_. And with me, you do. You always have,” he said as they drifted across the floor like a perfect poem, their limbs instinctively knowing when to slant rhyme and when to cut into the next stanza. “I realized that not long after we first met.”

Skeptical, Caroline snickered.

“Laugh all you want, sweetheart, but it’s true. Like you,” he spun her hard to the left, “like you, I denied it for a long time. I passed it off as mere fancy.”

“And now?”

“Now—” Klaus paused. He dropped his chin to blink away what looked like fear as she bounded back against his chest, her hand poised over his heart. “Now, my eyes are opened and I see. I see you, I see me. I see us and what we’re meant to be.” 

  _Quiero quedarme en tus ojos_  
_para ver el mundo como tu lo ves_  
_para sentir tus lágrimas correr_  
_Quiero quedarme en tus ojos_  
_para volver a ver_

“What are we meant to be exactly?” Caroline asked then, her fingers tracing and tangling into his necklaces.

Eyes steady and thoughts deep, he remained silent for a moment. Contemplative. Looking at her again, however, he melted her with a gaze that was softer but deeper than a sieve,

“I know you’re afraid of losing yourself again, love. I know you're terrified," Klaus breathed against her ear, his voice purring with understanding. "But I'm not going to rob you of who or what you are. That's not what I want," he said, "that's not what you deserve." 

"And what do I deserve?" 

As the music continued to swirl around their bodies, swaying their feet and knocking their hips together, his thumb traced the line of her jaw like a paintbrush. It caressed her cheek.

"All of it, sweetheart." Caroline's breath caught as he leaned closer, his hand burning against the small of her back, "Everything." 

> _Y ser en tus dudas lo único cierto_  
>  _tu paz y tu tiempo_

“I will never be the kind of man who will sweep you off your Cinderella feet. I won’t be a gallant prince for you all the time, so don't expect it,” he said. “I can’t be.”

“Why not? Too busy being a king, I suppose?” she teased. 

“No,” Klaus replied earnestly, “it's because I know who I am.”

"And who are you?"

He shrugged. Collecting words like jewels, he picked all the frank ones and showered them into Caroline’s ears like it was nothing. Captivating her again and again with his lyrical sincerity.

“I’m a flawed beast, Caroline, no fantasy. And I want you to know that,” he said, "I want you to know me." 

 

> _Dirigirme a ti en cada momento_  
>  _y expresarte lo que siento_

Something opposite of fear flapped in Caroline’s belly at this. Like this dance, like their entangled, complicated history, all of his words and promises smacked raw with emotion because they were stripped of pretense. They were honest and blunt.  _Real_. They felt real.

And in her arms, so did he.

“And whether you choose to believe it right now or not, we hear the same cadence of music." Dipping her backwards, Klaus' lips hovered tauntingly above the base of her throat, brushing close enough to her skin to bite. Or to kiss. “We  are meant to dance to the same beat,” he said.

“For how long?” Lifting her head from its leaned-back position, Caroline cradled herself like a sapphire in his arms, gleaming up at him all bold and beloved and beatific.

“Do you mean just for tonight," she asked as she curled her arms around his neck, reeling herself back into his eyes, "or for eternity?”

One blink.

Two blinks.

Three.

Three blinks and his arms fastened around her waist like a belt twinkling with the stars of infinity.

Klaus swiveled her against his chest, passionately sucking her into the black hole of his lips to damn her to the only insanity she could triumph over and exceed, but would never want to leave now that she'd allowed herself to succumb to it. And to him. Caroline wouldn't climb back out of this gravity, she realized. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Never, never again.

And remarkably enough, the taste of it—that forever in his mouth, that always in his kiss which left her panting and yearning for more—for the whole damn thing—hardened instead of wobbled her knees. It was how she knew. It was how she knew this was a truth she'd no longer fight because raw plus real plus Klaus equaled one thing: _C_ _omplete_.

“Don’t think, Caroline,” he breathed against her mouth as their bodies rocked together to the salsa rhythm, the night swallowing them in harmony. “Just move your feet.” 

 

> _Quiero beberte gota a gota_  
>  _quiero besar tu rica boca_
> 
>               xxx
> 
> _Quiero quedarme en ti_ ,  
>  _para siempre y a tu lado estar_  
>  _y poderte mi vida entregar_
> 
>               xxx
> 
> _Quiero quedarme en ti_ ,  
>  _indefinidamente_  
>  _quiero quedarme en ti_ ,  
>  _desde hoy y por siempre_

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always anxious about everything I write/post (never satisfied), particularly when it's for someone else. *covers eyes and hides*
> 
> This oneshot kind of took on a mind of its own. Since this is hurt/comfort-ish I tried to devote sufficient insight into Caroline's emotional state of mind and to highlight Klaus' understanding of her fears. I hope the humor and the ending helped to lighten the tone a little, because that was my aim. :) The Spanish lyrics toward the end (when they're dancing) are from a song called "Quiero Quedarme en Ti" by La Suprema Corte. I hope you liked it and thanks for reading!
> 
> xx


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